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Hans Reiser Interview from Prison
JLester writes "Wired Magazine has an interview this month with Hans Reiser (of the ReiserFS journaling file system for Linux) from prison. It contains more details about the murder case against him. Some of the questions still go unanswered though."
In Reiser's case, a critical piece of data -- the location of Nina Reiser -- has gone missing.
It should be in the journal somewhere.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Has he been in touch with the Juice to discuss strategy? Afterwards, they can go search golf courses for the real killers.
[
Isn't it weird how his gothy best friend who has had some kind of twisted sexual relationship with his wife is an admitted mass-murderer?
I'm just saying.
"If I coded it, here's how I coded it"
My theory is this: Nina went back to russia, and is now living there. The fact that the kids are in russia, and were supposed to return weeks ago, but haven't, makes me think that maybe they were reunited with their mother there. Just a thought.
... why can't Heiser? Well, it seems he is getting away with it, and blaming it on ReiserBecause he can't afford the type of attorneys it would take to get away with murder. Jay-walking, maybe...but not murder.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
For a guy that was accused of murdering his wife and put in prison, wasnt it a bit of a rude way to start the interview?
I was hoping they'd ask him about the tips he gave Chris Benoit last week.
Trolling is a art,
You're right. The much more orthodox opener "So, did you do it?" would have been much more polite.
Prison is where you go for periods generally over a year, after you have been sentenced. Jail is where you go when you are awaiting trial, or for minor offences, usually under a year.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
The story about Hans Reiser gets weirder every time I read about it. It's like you're reading some surrealistic novel, or maybe a plot by Grisham.
... ?)
For one, there is the question whether he is being framed (by a former friend, russian mafia,
Also there is the problem of (suspected) murder, but no body has been found. So, all evidence will be circumstantial and therefore open to lots of discussion/interpretation. "The brothers Karamazov" by Dostojevski has some very nice examples of how wide apart such interpretations can be (without the reader being able to tell which interpretation is true). Probably someone could write an interesting novel based on this story as well. It's getting so weird, you just can't make such stuff up.
It could become an interesting case to follow, so I'm hoping groklaw might pay some attention to it (if such hearings are even public - I don't have much clue about the US judicial system, but it seems unlikely).
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
'R' is for Reiser!
My blog
Aren't there any other open source author's facing major criminal charges? All we get is Hans, Hans, Hans. If not it seems Microsoft's Black Ops. Dept.* has missed an opportunity.
(* motto: "Beyond the blue screen")
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Judging from Reiser's obviously unstable mental state (his obsession about violent video games with his little boy is disgusting), the good grounds for suspicion in the investigation (the blood, the missing seat), and his ex-friend's admitted murderous and perverse behaviour, I think his kids are better off with the Grandmother in Russia.
Hmm....blame Free Software for that?
(It's a joke. I prefer FS/OSS.)
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
"The onus is on Reiser to come up with evidence - where is the chair? explain the blood, why was the car washed?"
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
I couldn't be arsed to read more than a couple of pages of the article with its silly format, but what's so surprising about finding traces of your SO's blood, or in washing your car?
Maybe he is guilty, I have no idea; but it's up to the police to prove that he is, not for him to prove that he's innocent.
Is this not the sort of event that opponents of Free Software would be having a wet dream over? Surely having a prominent programmer in jail or on remand for murder is worth a thousand patent FUD stories. Also it begs the question of whether it's advisable in the long run for prominent authors to put their names on the actual project itself - compare ReiserFS to say Samba (rather than Tridgeserv for example). Disclaimer: I use ReiserFS myself on my desktop!
Nonsense. It shows that the interviewer cared about the guy's work and accomplishments, not just his alleged crimes. For someone who has been sitting in prison, going to court hearings and meetings with lawyers and talking about nothing else, it was probably nice to talk filesystems for a change. I imagine the interviewer was the first person he'd seen in months who knew what a filesystem even was.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
"So, don't you wish real life had an undo button?"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
From what I've read, he doesn't come off as very innocent. I read the article in the paper magazine last weekend, and he just seems like a really weird guy. Despite the fact that they picked this interviewer because they thought he would understand Reiser, because he is a misunderstood geek, he still came off as quite a weird guy. The whole part about playing battlefield vietnam with his 6 year old so he could "become a man" was just kind of weird, and really made me question his values. Not that I'm against kids playing violent games, but his whole reasoning behind it was just kind of creepy.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Working out the reality is clearly a challenge.
Of course, divorce court just makes people imagine the worst about one another.
Deleted
I think the real question on everyone's minds is: Will he be allowed to continue software development while behind bars?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Then following up with "how's your ass".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world.
From everything I've read, I'm inclined to believe that Reiser is probably guilty, but if the above concept had really been applied in this case, the police would not have arrested him before they produced a positively identified body.
Because OJ had money, and that is the whole difference. Hans will lose.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I believe in fact the police will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt (a) that Nina was even murdered, (b) that Hans Reiser murdered her. He doesn't have to prove his innocence. There will have to be a convincing story that explains all the weird circumstances somehow.
Yes, so if he's such a genius, why would he be so stupid as to remove a seat of his car, wash it out as if blood has been removed, leave a book about how to get away with homicide in the back seat, etc. etc. It just sounds a bit...too much.
Crime passionel, perhaps. But to me, this hardly looks like a straightforward murder case. (it's still not even clear whether it is in fact a murder case AFAIK..)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
It is a guiliani doll.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world."
Only if you believe it's better to send innocent people to jail than let guilty people go free.
There's a scanner which can monitor brain activity realtime, depending on which areas light up, police can tell if you're lying or not. They don't even have to ask any questions, simply present evidence to you and watch what your brain does.
m l
e.g.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.ht
As a geek who's been falsely accused, I'm sure he'd be happy to submit to such a scan. Additional evidence for his defence lawyer.
Deleted
Yes, innocent until proven guilty. But almost assuredly, this will be a jury trial. And when the jury sees this information, will it be enough to prove that he is guilty? I suspect so.
More likely than not, he snapped. But in the end, it is not just several lives that were destroyed. Hopefully, his kids come out of this ok.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whether those techniques work at all in real world settings, and whether they work in a legal setting, are unresolved questions.
It will take many years before such techniques can be used in the real world, even if they work.
I find it really interesting if you look at the Russian mafia angle. Maybe Nina's in Russia?? I think that is where she really is considering that she had obtained Russian citizenship for both of her children. While Reiser is, shall we say, unique, he does not sound much different then alot of geeks. I hope something happens and he's freed. With the Children in Russia, there may never be a straight answer to what happened to Nina.
Gorkman
Hans Reiser has to be at least paranoid, which he apparently inherited from his father:Why would the FSB be interested in him? Don't they know that ReiserFS is open source?
Another nugget is his insistence on playing violent video games with his six year old son. He defended this practise in a "32-page filing" on the "culture of manhood" during his divorce trial. That alone has nutjob written all over it.Well, I don't see much of manhood in Hans Reiser's behaviour. He comes of as whiny and paranoid, accusing everybody but himself for his mistakes. And he appears even to be proud of conceiving a child in the first night with his mail order bride. That's both pathetic and idiotic!
And don't even get me started on this Sturgeon guy. It seems like lunatics come in packs. I for one wouldn't take Hans Reisers advice on anything but file systems serious.
Wow that looks really nasty. People like Hans should be put in some kind of protected custody in prison I think. Whether or not he's a murderer he certainly can't look after himself in jail.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself -- it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process." Crazy
Sure I have no proof but what if she's in Russia? As I see it now, she could comfortably be there now after slipping out of the country at the conclusion of this master plan. She'd be there with her children who are supposedly with her parents and no longer allowed to leave Russia, the money she embezzled from the company and the satisfaction of sticking it to her husband who she likely gained apathy towards over time after a combination of drugs and a more "macho" man comparison came into play.
Seriously though... she was involved in a number of circumstances individuals or their loved ones eventually have no recourse but to take drastic and dramatic action at times involving faking your own death or disappearing (e.g. hardcore drug spirals, weird religions/cults, severe psychiatric problems, mafia involvement in any way and so many more!)
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
There's nothing unusual about washing your car. But only the area around the front passenger seat was washed and that seat is missing. Removing seats is suspiciously thorough cleaning, dontcha think?
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Not saying its a good excuse, but put yourself in the same situation.
Your wife is in love/lust with your bi-S&M-druggie friend.
She files for divorce.
They conspire to take your company and everything you've worked for.
You know (or at least think) that after this, there's never going to be anyone else. He had to turn to a Russian bride already. I bet his social skills aren't even that great. Its easy to envision living alone forever after that, while your friend and your ex-wife run off together.
If you want to know why he looks/talks crazy..that's why. Doesn't justify murder, but might give some insight into why he looks shitty.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Washing your car's not unusual. Taking the passenger seat out in order to wash the carpet with water is.
And it's not up to the police to prove he's guilty - it's up to them to prove he's guilty "beyond reasonable doubt". This is pretty difficult to do with nothing but circumstantial evidence, but the presence of a jury could count against Reiser here.
If that article is anything to go by he needs to learn some social skills fast. A jury of ordinary people may not be too keen on someone who goes on about "playing violent videogames with his son to make him a man", and thus not set too much weight by him simply asserting that he is a lot of things but no murderer.
When they served the search warrant on him he was carrying about 9 grand in cash and his passport. You don't think he may be a flight risk?
There could absolutely be a very innocent reason why he removed the passenger seat of his car, hosed down the upholstery, and had a bunch of heavy duty trash bags. So why won't he tell police? Why won't he come up with where the seat is? That alone makes me think he's probably guilty. His goth buddy is great for raising reasonable doubt, but I knew a bunch of emotionally damaged morons when I was around the goth culture who had only a fleeting hold on reality, and would gladly tell you they'd killed 8 people if it'd make them seem more cool and intense.
We all know (or may be) someone who's a socially awkward ubergeek just like Hans, and maybe we're a little defensive of those people because we hate seeing them get picked on, but that doesn't mean Reiser didn't kill his wife.
--Obyron
If you just look at the superficial evidence, there's a lot of suspicious stuff to focus on Reiser. But if you look into the details further, the affair with the S&M guy who admits to being a mass murderer, accounting irregularities in the company, you start to wonder. There have been cases in real life, not just television, where murders have been faked. I remember once case where a young man faked his death in an auto accident by substituting another body for his own and ensuring it was so badly burned that identification was impossible. It sounds like a television plot but it's real.
While the circumstantial evidence makes him look like the prime suspect, the circumstantial evidence also casts a lot of doubt upon his associates. Just what the hell is going on here? It could very well be as the police suspect, a sloppy killing with him having to play catch-up to cover all the evidence, or it could be something weirder. I don't see this as a clean open and shut case.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You trust the police far too much. They ARE government employees, after all, with all the eliteness and objectivity that that implies.
Hmm.. It's pretty suspicious that Han's kids are still in Russia with his former mother-in-law.
I think she's alive and well in Russia. If she was killed her body or parts of would have turned
up by now. And if she is alive, maybe this was her parents way of getting her out of the US? She
was a bright woman who started to take a pretty dark path. You could see all the classic signs here.
Hans was too rapped up into namesys. He married a hottie wife who noticed that she was getting a lot
of attention elsewhere. I think once Nina started messing around with other stuff her parents got
her out of the country. The fact that the passenger seat is missing from the CRX and the fact that car
had been washed out, casts some doubt on the belief that Hans is innocent here. He needs to come clean
with information about that.
I think the defense needs to monitor Nina's Mom and Hans' kids in Russia to see if Nina is there.
Only if you believe it's better to send innocent people to jail than let guilty people go free.
Why can't we do both?
I don't know. Maybe I'm just an idealist dreamer.
intrigue, mystery, a freak that makes charlie manson clap, russian mob, sex, drugs
fuck it when is the movie coming out. ray liota would be perfect for the role of hans reiser, i can see it now
anyhow there are enough oddities in the story that unreasonable doubt is pretty certain, if this is all there is to it anyway
i hope he gets out tho because let's face it the OSS community has dropped him like a stone, and that's just not right imho
and it doesn't change the fact that reiserfs is pretty revolutionary although i have had experiences with it
"Guilty until proven innocent" is sometimes call the Napoleonic code due to the seeming de facto presumption of guilt under that system in Napoleon's France, and later elsewhere in Europe. It *can* actually be made to work very well if the defendant is given the appropriate resources, but I don't think I'd like it personally. I think Old English Common Law was like this as well, but I'm too lazy to look it up. :)
Discussion on reddit
...Because the police have a coherent theory, it's up to Reiser to prove otherwise? I hope you never get to serve on a jury in the U.S. -- and if you ever do, the defense attorney must've had a room-temperature IQ.
Liberty in your lifetime
there is far too much circumstantial evidence pointing his way, enough for me, at least, to believe he's guilty of at least being an accomplice or hiding evidence (if he was framed by the Russian mafia, why the money, passport, and cover up?). This one will be interesting - it's basically the anti-OJ - a poor white geek in an odd murder case instead of a rich black jock. My guess is he fries.
"The onus is on Reiser to come up with evidence - where is the chair? explain the blood, why was the car washed?"
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
True enough, but you don't necessarily need a lot of evidence to get a conviction. Look up Michael Skakel, a Kennedy relative, and you'll find a guy who was convicted of murder on incredibly thin evidence. In the past, people have been convicted of murder and executed when no body was ever found. In my old hometown, a doctor got convicted of murder some years ago on completely circumstantial evidence. Basically they could tie him to a dead woman because he had an affair with her, but there was no hard evidence to tie him to her body. He still got convicted, but because of various reasons he got a retrial and, lucky for him, the DA died and the DA's replacement botched the re-trial and the guy walked. Do I think he killed the lady? I sure do, but I also completely understand why the jury foreman was quoted after the re-trial was over as saying the DA had nothing and that's why they voted for not guilty. Reiser may legally be "innocent until proven guilty" but what they have may be enough to convince a jury that he did it.
I agree , I some how doubt his husband bubba cares about a file system.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
If you ever serve jury duty. That way they can dismiss you and choose jurors who can do the job correctly.
are the only words I can think of after reading this really weird, creepy story.
Bye egghat.
P.S. All my wishes to the kids.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
"I'm not saying he should have killed her, but I understand..."
Anytime you can't explain things like missing vehicles and scrubbed interiors, you got problems. I was expecting a police conspiracy after reading the comments, but there are a lot of arrows pointing at him. And, what's with his "friend" Sturgeon? It's almost as if he doesn't get that banging your buddy's wife might cause some strain on your relationship!
No sympathy for the guy, though. A hot Russian mail order bride doctor and you don't suspect the package might be a little too good to be true?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Have gnu, will travel.
They are deliberately cheesy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Guilty until proven innocent" is sometimes call the Napoleonic code due to the seeming de facto presumption of guilt under that system in Napoleon's France, and later elsewhere in Europe. It *can* actually be made to work very well if the defendant is given the appropriate resources, but I don't think I'd like it personally. I think Old English Common Law was like this as well, but I'm too lazy to look it up. :)
No. US law is based upon UK law (hint: the US was one of our colonies). The innocent until proven guilty bit is the foundation of British Law. You are correct about Napoleonic law.
Have to be open source. I don't believe prisoners are allowed to profit from books anymore.
There could be good reasons for having these things on him, other than flight risk. If he was expecting arrest, having the $9k in cash on him would keep that money locked away as "personal effects" until his release. That would be a place, I suspect, legally protected in some ways that a bank might not protect him -- such as protection from creditors. (and he did have major financial issues, so that would be a very likely reason) Of course, there is now the potential for thievery by prison employees.
As for having a passport, there might be similar reasons. If you might go to jail for even a year, for purposes of trial, you might not want to leave your most important documents lying around for your family to scour through, burn, or box up. I personally know that my mother would throw everything into a box in her wet basement, to be subsequently damaged come the first rain. Suspicious? Perhaps. Beyond a reasonable doubt? No.
Buying books? If you thought that you were being suspected of a murder, would you buy such books? Its a tough call. The smart thing to do is to research, the dumb thing to do is cast suspicion. Unfortunately, these things can conflict quite severely. Regardless, there is reasonable doubt here.
Blood? Thats more serious, but also not that unusual. Some people have history of undiagnosed chronic nosebleeds, women have periods, and heck, its not that hard to cut yourself. Blood doesn't mean murder, it can mean an (honest-to-goodness) non-fatal accident, non-fatal domestic abuse, even a paper cut. Personally, I think that unless there is a significant amount of blood found, there isn't much to go on, and even then, it isn't conclusive. The important thing here is quantity (5 pints would be a problem!) and age. For instance, if there are 5 pints of blood but there is a severe difference in the *age* of the blood that could indicate storage -- what if someone drew a pint of blood every 3 months for the last year? That would be enough blood to make it look like they died.
Washing the car? Some people find washing their car a great way to relieve stress, which I'm sure he was having plenty of -- with a missing wife. This is really inconclusive.
The point is, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence, that without a body, makes it hard to prove that there was any crime at all. No single thing here can prove that Hans murdered Nina. Yeah, you've got some dots, and you can connect them to make Hans look guilty, but you can also connect them to make him look innocent. Of course, thats what lawyers are for.
The thing is: For every innocent person in jail, there's a criminal that got away with the crime. Having an innocent person in jail isn't just bad for that person, but bad for society as a whole.
wrapped up with "What exactly will you do for a carton of cigarettes?"
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."
So I guess this is a confession now? I'm sorry but that's just deceiving and wrong. He calls a patch against the kernel tree a "program" and all the pluses he didn't remove before the code reaffirm this suspicion that he doesn't even know what proper code looks like. He makes it sound as if this comment describing how a specific file structure of the file system works as some sort of "secret confession" hidden there for the unscrupulous researcher. Joshua Davis, please turn in your geek badge!
With someone that calls himself a geek to come with such a preposterous conclusion leaves me little room for hope that any sort of truth of this case from either side will come out or that any real justice will be done. It speaks volumes of the "blindness of justice" and how our prisons end up being jammed with people placed on death row with DNA evidence later exonerating them and having no recourse to repair their life or credibility. So truly, Death really is a Complex Process.
Here is the actual passage he was talking about:
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
According to the article, Reiser thought the Russian mafia or spy agency was tracking him. It was actually the local police, but because they used many unmarked cars and airplanes, he thought the tracking was beyond the scope of a local police force.
If you thought that the Russian mafia or spy agency was after you, would you be driving around in your personal vehicle that they know is yours? Or would you drive someone else's car? I don't think that I would have the courage to drive my own car if I believed some "serious people" were after me.
Also, I'm told that removing the passenger seat is common in the "ricer" community.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world.
Kind of like ReiserFS itself, actually. Complex, sophisticated, capable of stunning performance, and likely to crack up under unexpected loads.
His father does sound like a paranoid freak who contributed to this, though, doesn't he?
Reiser is being represented by Daniel Horowitz, who's wife was killed a month after Nina went missing. A young goth kid (Scott Dyleski) was eventually found to have committed the murder. That seems another bizarre coincidence in an already intriguing mystery...
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
This part is the most damning evidence. However, having these items in ones car isn't that unusual either. What was in the car that wasn't mentioned? Was he simply cleaning the car to sell it? (if so where is that seat?) Did he simply spill a bottle of water in his car and place the towels there to clean up? (I've had this happen to me)
Frankly, I don't think that having masking tape and trash bags in one's car to be that strange or unusual. Heck, I probably have those items in the back of my car right now... right next to the shovel. That doesn't mean I've killed anyone.
If that's the code snippet they're talking about, that is some strange terminology. It seems like an odd mix of very technical terms with almost creepy descriptions (i.e. describing the birth, maturity, death, limbo of processes). I'm not a professional coder (though I did study programming for a few years and am an amateur geek), these comments seem really strange even by computer code comment standards.
but not your assertion that people break the law "because they don't have any other options." That may be one reason some people break the law, but the reality is far more complex.
Using your car analogy (/. loves those) it might be the case that some people run red lights because they're being tailgated. Far more common, however, is people who run the red light because they're in a hurry to get where they're going, or are driving too fast for the conditions and can't stop, who are too busy talkin on their phone to notice that the lgiht changed, or narcissists who essentially say to themselves "My desire for unimpeded travel outweighs the needs of others for the same." In my experience, morons and the selfish far outnumber cautious drivers trying to avoid an accident.
That said, I agree that any attempt to exploit this would probably fail. For one thing, tell the average person that "Some OSS programmer killed his wife" and you're going to get a blank stare and the question "What is OSS?" A backlash against precieved exploitation of the situation is another possibility. In addition, companies that have a legal department have to tread lightly in cases like this, since all you can say until he's convicted is "accused killer"--and even that is iffy.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
There could absolutely be a very innocent reason why he removed the passenger seat of his car, hosed down the upholstery, and had a bunch of heavy duty trash bags. So why won't he tell police? Why won't he come up with where the seat is? That alone makes me think he's probably guilty. His goth buddy is great for raising reasonable doubt, but I knew a bunch of emotionally damaged morons when I was around the goth culture who had only a fleeting hold on reality, and would gladly tell you they'd killed 8 people if it'd make them seem more cool and intense.
There is a very simple answer to this. The 5th amendment to the US constitution states:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
You cannot be compelled to testify for or against yourself in the US. You cannot be forced to produce evidence against yourself. You do not have to answer any questions at all. The evidence that has been put forth, while compelling, does strike me as circumstantial and although I agree that he sounds guilty, I believe he will ultimately be freed.
Oderint dum metuant
You trust the police far too much. They ARE government employees, after all, with all the eliteness and objectivity that that implies.
While in other cases trust in the police may be an issue, the police don't decide guilt or innocence, they merely collect evidence and build a case, and I see no evidence of anything wrong in their evidence gathering. Based on what's described in this article, I would expect a conviction.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
lying:
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
It doesn't make any claims about determining truth. Now *that* is the philosophical question you were talking about.
Deleted
This is less acceptable than taking a kid to the firing range and teaching how to use a gun in real life "to become a man"??
Seriously?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
this fiasco is going to make one kick ass episode of law and order, you've got the husband suspected of murder; the wife's friend/lover who is serial killer but swears up and down he would never hurt her; and the douche bag reporter putting words into people's mouthes.
lose != loose
this comment.
Best Slashdot Co
This is somehow off-topic but I've only seen a few videos of him where he looked a lot heavier and, err, well-nourished in comparison to the image in the Wired article. Did he lose all that weight in prison or was he on a diet before his arrest?
:/- spoon(_).
"Violence against your wife is inappropriate and illegal (unless of course it's to protect yourself from her)"
Bondage. S&M. You are wrong.
As to the rest of your moronic reply, YOU JUDGE A CASE ON THE FACTS, not on your imbecilic preconceived notions.
Do you have a problem with adhering to the Constitution?
>So why won't he tell police? Why won't he come up with where the seat is?
Maybe he knows but is just not telling you, not telling reporters, etc.
Maybe the defense is playing certain cards close to their vests.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
sigh.
...
..therefore the onus is on him to provide an explanation or some form of defense. if he does not then can you see any Jury acquitting him? I'm not saying that the police should have the power to presume guilt - of course not - I'm saying that in this case him staying silent is really not a sensible course of action.
:-(
I'm not arguing against innocent until proven guilty, thats just as important in the UK as it is in the US.
what I *am* saying is that there are a number of huge unknowns here and some damn compelling circumstantial evidence. Amongst others
1. the missing car seat
2. the freshly washed car
3. the fact of the passport and wads of cash he had on him
4. the book on murder
5. the missing wife
6. the motive
7. thoroughly strange behavior (driving around, leaving the car)
I'll admit I phrased badly though.
Posting cowardly for this one:
When first heard the news about Nina missing I did a casework on her (check on the Silva Method for what casework is), what I got back is that she was killed by Hans and she is buried in some backyard, the yard is in some sort of downslope, no much grass, with tall trees behind.
Don't take this one for granted, I haven't practiced enough of this psychic stuff to be sure about this.
I must say, the article describes some very damning evidence: "Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina." This is after the police have (surreptitiously) followed Hans to the car and observed him moving it to a different location. What other explanation could there be for this than that Hans did indeed murder Nina, especially since (as far as I can tell from the article) Hans has offered no other explanation for the state of the car? Some of the rest of his interview sounds pretty creepy and paranoid too. For example, Hans says: "Male geeks, such as myself, are one of America's most hated cultural minorities," he writes. "Unlike racial hatred, it is considered socially acceptable to indulge in such hatred." This is obviously completely ridiculous. He then proceeds to use this as an excuse for a lot of strange behavior, such as wanting to "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness" (talking about playing hours and hours of Battlefield Vietnam with his six year old son). None of that is evidence of murder of course, but it does make Hans seem unstable and paranoid and his explanations suspect. All in all it seems likely to me that Hans did indeed murder Nina. Of course in theory I suppose it's possible that he's the victim of some extremely elaborate setup (which I fully expect many people who watch too much CSI to claim), but in reality I think that's an very unlikely option. Having said that, this is just what I currently personally believe. If I was a juror I would vote "not guilty" on this evidence. I'm a big believer in "proven beyond all reasonable doubt." As long as there isn't even any evidence that Nina is actually dead, let alone hard evidence that Hans did it, I would have give him the benefit of the doubt, even though personally I find it more likely that he did it than not. To let off a murderer would be very bad, but in my opinion it would be much worse to wrongly convict an innocent man.
I would have read the whole article were it not for the weird style.
I couldn't tell fact from fiction; was the interviewer trying to get me to think Reiser is innocent? Or was he trying to confuse me? Or was his style simply to make it sound like some weird cyber-book?
I'm confused - call me when it's decided.
You missed an important point in my post - the phrase "goes on about".
"I took my son to a firing range to learn how to use a gun" is one thing. Spending 30 minutes in front of a jury going on about how it will make him a man, eventually sounding like one of the more eccentric characters Michael Moore filmed in "Bowling for Columbine", is quite another.
>Uhh arresting and indicting someone doesn't imply we assume that person to be guilty. What do you think the trial is meant to check?
It does mean that the prosecuting agent assumes the person to be guilty. But they don't get to declare the person guilty -- they have to persuade an impartial court, which must maintain presumption of innocence.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Where is the body? If you can't come up with a body, you at least need a strong theory as to how the body was disposed of or destroyed.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is still in play. What the OP was saying is, "Here is circumstantial evidence that strongly points toward 'guilty'." The onus is on Reiser to provide some plausible explanation other than "I killed my wife" which is where the evidence currently points. Circumstantial evidence may not strictly be considered proof, but circumstantial evidence with no explanation other than guilt can be considered Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
Redundancy is good And also good.
they won't find a body because she's not dead.
she's been taking the money and gave it to her boy friend who loanded it back to hans.
the interview never says how the friend came into that much money. did no one else notice this?
they fake her death and frame hans.
the friend can pass a polygraph because he "didn't kill her".
as for the seat, i think they drugged him(yes, both the wife and boyfriend have a history of experimentation/use), drove the car to where they left it and let him wake up there.
he knew where the car was, but has no way to explain how it got there. this would freak out most people.
yes he could have done it, but this no more unrealistic than anything else i've read.
How do you do it?
Sincerely,
The Amazing Sarcasmo
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Even if Hans is guilty, he would serve society better if he can work on his filesystem instead of idling in prison.
Nonsense. It shows that the interviewer cared about the guy's work and accomplishments, not just his alleged crimes.
I disagree. It was used to put his interviewee at ease and to build a working relationship. The journalist was just doing his job of getting his subject to open up.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Can't say I know the man from Adam however.
Sadly, much like cynicism is used a lazy-man's substite for critical thought, outrageous, contraversial, or vulgar statements are often used as a lazy-man's substitute for humor.
For what it's worth, may the truth of the matter, whatever that is, be ultimately determined.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Nina's parents managed to get custody of the kids. They fled to Russia and are staying there. I've said it from the beginning that Nina Reiser fled to Russia. Has anyone bothered to look for her there? With the kids staying in Russia because "they're too afraid to go back to the US", that just seems to indicate even more that she's there.
I dunno.
People who've been unjustly stripped of their freedom don't tend to come out of prison with too great respect for the law. Add that to the financial ruin and social ostracism that being sent to prison entails, and you can get someone with a genuine grievance against society and nothing left to lose but their lives.
There's nothing like a good gunfight to uplift the spirit--Calvin
The prosecutors are going to need something more than what is public in order to prosecute Mr. Reiser.
Their most important witness, the child, is in Russia. And even his statements are inconsistent about whether his parents were fighting the day she disappeared, and whether he saw her leave the house alone.
The boyfriend she was leaving him for is an admitted sadomasochist and mass murderer who says he has "nothing to hide." Oh sure, you can trust him.
There is no body, and she's from another country (same country where her kid is at). So we don't even know if she's really dead.
The only real admissible evidence against him is that he left his Mom's car on the street behind her house with a passenger seat missing. Maybe he was cleaning it up after disposing of the body... maybe. But "maybe" is a far cry from being beyond a reasonable doubt.
Look for Mr. Reiser to be released from jail some time soon unless something new comes up. There is no way the prosecutors can go to trial on this evidence unless there is additional evidence that we don't know about yet.
In this case, the guy got a cash payout for the wrongful imprisonment, then lured someone to his place on the premise of taking a picture of something for sale, and murdered her.
People who've been unjustly stripped of their freedom don't tend to come out of prison with too great respect for the law.
True, but perfection is impossible to achieve. People who are killed by someone who wasn't found guilty of a previous crime lose quite a bit too.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Assumed innocence is a legal concept. It applies to juries and the judge, but not so much to the peanut gallery (journalists are guided by legal advice that keeps them from being sued for slander or libel).
So, yes, as far as the court is concerned, it is up to the DA and the police to provide a convincing argument, supported by evidence, as to Mr. Reiser's guilt. None of this stops anyone here from drawing their own conclusions. Consider this: is there still anyone credible who thinks O. J. Simpson is innocent of his ex-wife's murder? He was found not guilty in a court of law, after all.
Nobody's going to be sent to the chair for comments made by some other schmoe on Slashdot.
Canthros
A close friend of mine's had his girlfriend usurped from him in the same way. A "friend" fed her drugs, got her addicted and then moved in on her. It was bad, and there were no kids or money involved. When is that ever appropriate? "Stergeon" has admitted to killing before, S&M, carving things into his arm, HELLO *Freak-alert*, once that line has been crossed once and he has gotten away with it what's to stop him doing it again. Do you think a guy like this would give a fuck about code, how many of you coders out there have dived so deeply into a project that it absorbs all attention. This is what's happened to reiser, he couldn't see what was going on around him, his focus was elsewhere, he was a target.
No this reeks of set-up, I don't know why, but my guts are saying that reiser didn't do it.
If any of you encountered people addicted to MMDH? they don't process emotions very well, they forget who/what is important in thier lives - they can be manipulated, especially if Stergeon was in a position of trust. What sort of drugs was he into? Born again, my ass. I've met people like this - they will do or say anything.
I know some bikers and they say, fuck with thier head, then fuck with thier finances, then fuck with thier life.
What if that last conversation reiser had with nina was "I don't give a flying fuck what you do anymore, just stay away from me and my kids and get out of my life.
No, I think reiser realised to late he was being set-up,betrayed/used/manipulated and went into damage control mode, maybe he didn't want to beleive his friend was that much of a freak and when the police followed him it fed his paranoia/confusion even more, he visits russia for god sake, maybe he borrowed money from the russian mafia, it's common knowledge they have access to former KGB infrastrusture/contacts.
What if Stergeon set Reiser up for nina's murder and reiser realised to late what was going on, but not late enough for to get rid of the suspicion, but just enough to mess up thier plans. What if reisers kids were being threatened - and reiser knows?
And when asked about the car seat reiser talked about the FS source code, what sort of frame of mode was this guy when he wrote these comments... I mean some of them seem superflous..
my 2 cents.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
not that funny really, not funny at all.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Yes, it's alarming to get squid error messages like "dead sibling found" but it is a metaphor. This is obviously the same and people are grasping at straws to find a pattern to speculate on whatever happened. It's just like his silly illustrated dancing tree description elsewhere - the metaphor described in great detail perhaps becuase that's the way he likes to describe things.
I'm not really disagreeing with you on the impossibility of achieving "perfection", just pointing out that biasing things toward guilt has other, more indirect costs.
There's nothing like a good gunfight to uplift the spirit--Calvin
And I vote we amend that to state something that supports the claim of the defendant...
"Innocent UNLESS proven guilty."
But in our current government under the oppressive King Bush, we won't see these kinds of citizen-centric things passed down.
We need to stop including verbage that assumed everyone is guilty, and its only a matter of time until there's enough evidence to prove it.
If you lock everyone up, by definition you are locking up the innocent without letting the guilty go free. QED.
Yes, I missed the joke...
That's a rather fascist attitude.
For (7), I'd be acting strangely if I had random cars and planes following my every move. And the worst crime I've committed in years is jaywalking.
That would also explain the cash and passport -- if you're being chased, you want cash on you in case your enemies can trace your credit cards when you manage to lose them; and you want to be able to leave the country.
As for motive, his wife left him and started sleeping with someone else well before this. A very patient murder, if he's to blame.
There's clearly stuff he's not coming clean about, but for all I know it could be running drugs for the Russian mob, which would be a reason not to tell the cops about the car, and to check on it, and to scrub it and remove the passenger seat.
All's true that is mistrusted
Is it possible to convict someone for murder if no body is ever found? The CRX is a smoking gun, alas, it LOOKS very much like Reiser murdered his wife. The items found in it strongly suggest the crime, and, more importantly, how else would anyone else have used the car? I mean, the car was hidden somewhere that Reiser knew the location of, and he presumably had the only set of keys. It seems unlikely that Sturgeon had the keys. Heck, even if it were a frame up, how would Reiser have known where to get the car from?
It is pretty difficult to come up with a theory that fits the evidence that doesn't involve Reiser having killed his wife.
WITH THAT SAID, if no body nor sufficient blood to show a death occurred is ever found, what crime can he be charged with?
There was an interesting case in the town where I live a few years ago where a girl got prosecuted though nobody really believed she was guilty.
The girl and her boyfriend went out for the night, got completely plastered and ended up having a row outside a nightclub. Things got pretty heated and in the resultant pushing and shoving the boyfriend tripped over and fell into the road - right in front of a fast moving car.
After much prevarication they eventually decided to prosecute the girlfriend for manslaughter, as much to definitively settle the matter as anything else - she was found not guilty.
I'm not his Jury - it's just me and my opinion, here.
In my opinion, he certainly could be a lot more forthcoming; and so could Sturgeon. They're BOTH hiding something.
There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.
I'd like to believe that Sturgeon did it.
I'd like to believe that Nina is alive, in Russia, with the kids.
But it does not make sense that Hans Reiser would be spouting all this nonsense, unless he's really no longer mentally competent. Or, he's concealing a secret that is more important to him than his own freedom. Clamming up about what happened to the car, and the seat, does not make him guilty - of course. He has that right under the 5th Amendment. But it makes him look bad.
Apparently, he no longer cares about appearances.
And that's not a good sign.
Although it does lend credence to the idea that there's some involvement with Nina and the Russian Mafia. . .
I know this is a very sick, and American thing for me to say; but this is going to make a great murder-mystery movie someday.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hans shot first, so all he can do is to pray there'll be special edition where he doesn't.
Who is John Galt?
"There could absolutely be a very innocent reason why he removed the passenger seat of his car, hosed down the upholstery, and had a bunch of heavy duty trash bags. So why won't he tell police?"
Maybe he had a gay gangbang in the car and the passenger seat and footwell got covered in semen and shit. Maybe at some time his wife cut herself and bled all over the seat and he thought it would be used against him. Maybe he was trying to solve his financial problems by smuggling mexican brown hidden in the seat and one of the packages burst . . . and so on and on, I can think of hundreds of explanations somebody might not want to pass on to the police (some illegal some not).
Who knows, but it doesn't matter - he doesn't have to explain it, and the 'if you've got nothing to hide' argument is just an excuse for fascism.
of absolute freak?
And I thought I was weird. All I did was rob two banks, did some time and overeat burgers and Hagen Daaz.
I don't think I've ever had any friends who carved things into their arms (not that there's anything wrong with B&D, or other fetish behavior - except the juvenility of it all, of course.)
Humans are seriously fucked up.
This story is an example of how you seriously need to check out who you associate with. Other people will get you in prison as fast as you can do it on your own.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What? He doesn't behave like the rest of us? What does that mean? That you aren't normal if you ain't got a normal 9 to 5 desk job, go home, eat dinner, walk the dog, sit in front of the telly, brush your teeth, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again, ad infinitum?
So writing a book is strange behaviour? Or is it the aliens invading the earth? He does know that there are actually quite a lot of people writing about that? Some of them quite famous as well. Don't know how many of them have murdered their spouses though. Now that I think about it, maybe it was the video game... no, can't be, even Microsoft sells games nowadays so it can't be bad.
Even just the text "he lives in his own world of..." suggests that somehow he is an asocial person, a loner that doesn't get out much, who probably doesn't have many friends and is badly adjusted to the world around him. It sounds so damn PATRONIZING! Does this guy think he's a licensed psycho-analyst or something?
Owkee, seems he does.
If y'all don't mind I'll just wait for the trial and see what proof they have found (if any) instead of listening to some wanker from wired doing his Freud impression.
After reading almost all of the current replies....
The US law is "beyond a reasonable doubt". And with this freak show, I see all kinds of doubt.
There was some discussion about letting the guilty go free vs. putting innocents in jail. For some reason I don't think this individual is going to go on and kill more people (if he did kill his wife).
Yes, he is wacko. But circumstance, at least to me, is not compelling enough to take away someone's life.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'd have to argue that shooting cans and paper targets would have a slightly less traumatic effect on a six year old mind.
According to an article I read, probably in Time, supposedly you're more likely to get convicted if you don't provide explanations for the evidence against you. Bad strategy then, regardless of the philosophy.
"Son of Sam" laws vary state by state, and some of them have been struck down by the court system.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
The article did mention something about solitary, so it looks like the jail is taking some measures to protect him. (The main difference between protective custody and solitary is that the former has a nicer name).
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Hmmm, not always. Sometimes it's enough to show that the person in question would never have left of their own volition (except in Texas, where a body or substantial part of a body is required for a homicide conviction). I really don't think that comes into play here, seeing as how she's a foreign national and her children are in her country of origin.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
...who at least understands and to some degree supports what he was doing with his son. Granted BFV is probably not the best method to introduce a child to violence, but too many Americans do not seem to realize that only a tiny portion of the country is actually Disneyland. At least when I was in elementary school, which would have been the first half of the 90's, our history classes were full of war: the strategies, the civilian casualties, and particular emphasis on all those who died in the civil war that were only a few years older than we were. I don't talk to kids all that often, as I have none I am aware of, but whenever I have spoken to my father's younger step children, they are completely ignorant of these things. Granted that is not a statistically significant sample, and it is also quite probable that they are just piss poor students, I do get the impression that such things do not get the proper attention in modern schools. American youth (I am one of them, I can talk) grow up thinking they deserve all their freedoms and never realize that what they deserve is irrelevant; you have what you can take and defend. We are currently just riding on the accomplishments of past generations as the spoiled progeny of far greater people. When John Stewart had the Palestinian president as a guest on The Daily Show, the president mentioned once how terrorists detonated car bombs on a bridge, and he took that bridge to work the next morning. Stewart said that he certainly handled the situation better than he would have, and the president just said "I know." The audience sort of did a dry heave of a laugh as they realized the absence of any joke. Perhaps if our youth did get proper exposure to violence, people would not be able to fire off 170 rounds with handguns in crowded buildings without someone jumping them when they tried to reload, and hijackers would be met by angry business class passengers brandishing uncapped ink pens. But that is just my opinion.
Don't worry ElleyKitten, you're not the one who's coming off as emotional or abusive here. You also refrain from making personal attacks. The difference in humanity in this discussion is clear.
Your knowledge of the application of the 5th amendment is woefully shortsighted. The Constitution protects you from self-incrimination, but it does not protect you from circumstantial evidence presented against you.Certainly, Reiser could plead the 5th. However, if he does, his defense will have a hell of a time trying to explain away certain aspects of his behavior. If he has a logical explanation for the missing car seat, the vanishing CRX, the large amount of cash, the passport, and the allegedly "scrubbed" crime scene, it may be in his best interest to let the jury hear his side of the story.
And to put the evidence against him in perspective: One-hundred percent of the evidence presented at Scott Peterson's trial was circumstantial. He's now on death row. Circumstantial evidence is just as admissable and can be just as damning as direct evidence. The only thing Reiser has going for him right now is that there is no body - nor is there any evidence of a life-or-death struggle. It is very hard (but not impossible) to convince a Judge and Jury that a murder has occurred without a body.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Also consider the word "proof". This is not "proof" in the scientific sense. I doubt most judges or lawyers even have enough of a science background to understand what the scientific sense is. As best as I can tell, "proof" means anything that has not been cast into some degree of doubt by the other side, where doubt must also be "reasonable".
So what is this reasonableness, anyway? What I regard it as being is likely totally different from anything anyone else sees it as being. To me, "reasonableness" in a legalistic sense would mean "if you had N people of average or above average intelligence, from a uniformly random cross-section of the population, who were honest to themselves and others and who held no preconceived notions on the subject, the majority would reach a similar or the same conclusion".
(I'm crudely basing that on the whole notion of the jury being "twelve good men and true" and the requirements for impartiality and fairness that can be traced through history to the very origins of the legal system.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ever hear of former District Attorney for Durham County, North Carolina Mike Nifong?
What, exactly, do you mean by that? That they should have been locked up for a potential future crime? That they were obviously bad, so even if they didn't do that crime they must have done some other crime? Wow.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
What if it is a setup? What if Nina, all by herself, or with the help of the rusian mob poured a pint or two of her own blood all over the front seat of his car and then disapeared.
... "Gee officer, I really didn't kill my estranged and recently missing wife - she just poured her blood all over the seat to frame me."
Put yourself in his shoes - what would you do? You come out to find your blood all over the seat of your car and put that together with the rest of what's going on. Maybe you stash it out of sight while you try to locate her - but she's disapeared. Do you really think going to the police with that story is going to hold up
Me - I'd do what he did. Clean the car and hope I could swing some reasonable doubt from the jury. Which there is plenty of in this case. My gut says he did it - but hopefully the jury votes with their heads and not their gut. My head tells me there are to many what-ifs to send a guy to prison for the rest of his life based on what we've heard so far.
"Should the government be keeping me from showing my son how to direct brave goblin suicide bombers against their elven oppressors?" - Hans Reiser
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
You know, if you read my posts instead of jumping up to flame me you'd notice that I never said I'd make a snap judgment as a juror, that was someone else. If you notice, I said that if I was on the jury I would be able to read his entire filing and look at the other evidence. If it's not what it looks like from the small snipets of data we have, fine. Save your flames for someone else.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Fascism would be saying he HAS to explain it, which he does not. If it never comes out in the course of the trial and the jury finds it incredibly suspicious, and it's used as a reason to convict him, is that fascism? These are the kinds of things I'd be trying like crazy to explain if I were on the hook for murder. I obviously don't think the police should have the right to hook electric leads to his nipples and juice him until he answers the question. I love the Fifth Amendment as much as any red blooded libertarian. I'm just saying that, as a criminal defendant, you want to try to explain away the things that are making you look like a murderer.
--Obyron
Let's lock you up. I mean, maybe you'll do something in the future. To be safe, let's lock you up.
1. I assume you have no problem with that?
2. Society will be safer. *Anyone* can kill. If you are in jail, at least there is one less variable.
So when will you report to the nearest detention center?
And if he's anything like me, once he started talking about his pet topic it would have been almost impossible to shut him up without seeming impolite.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Worse, if innocent people often go to jail, where's the disincentive to commit crime? You'll probably be caught whether you did commit a crime or not.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Fascism is just the word that has been re-purposed to indicate any authoritarianism that the speaker disapproves of.
The original meaning is lost already.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
And I said 'someone should grep the reiser codebase for comments'. And the journalist who wrote this article did, at the end. Kinda creepy, although crafty journalism was shown throughout the article. Very good read, although long, like a real live murder mystery for geeks.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Linus can only be killed by a bus.
Police tend to make snap judgments of people and then work hard to make a case for the prosecutors. Prosecutors tend to pursue any case they think they can win. Winning depends on the jurors. Jurors tend to... well, jurors tend to be the same people who made huge hits out of Geraldo, professional wrestling, and CSI. When jurors are essentially your boss's boss, that must warp your idea of what it means to do your job.
So, in what part of this chain are there "experts" who specialize in guilt and innocence? Like any other low-paid professionals, police officers get called in once or twice a year for a talk about their "numbers," which determine who gets raises and who gets "performance improvement plans." Officers process routine jobs as efficiently as they can and try to keep their numbers up. If being a police officer is like any other job in America, a tough case is nothing but a bad break that ruins your numbers for the month with no compensation for handling it well, unless it happens to be high profile, in which case you'll come under severe pressure to provide the appearance of a successful outcome. And why would being a police officer be any different from being an accountant or a factory foreman?
Think about it. How much skill could you develop at your job if all your boss cared about was the opinion of a rotating board of randomly chosen idiots?
If the recounting of the evidence against him is accurate: Wife boffing S&M admitted murderer boyfriend, wife and boyfriend robbing seriously socially challenged geek hubby blind, wife filing for divorce, wife disappearing (I doubt ex-wives like this amazing piece of work stick around their ex-husbands), no body, no murder weapon, no evidence of any crime--a washed car with a missing passenger seat is weird, but not evidence of a crime--just a drop of blood, and suspicious books purchased AFTER ex-wife's vanishing act (aren't those usually acquired BEFORE a nefarious deed)--if all this is more or less accurate despite its utter zaniness, I'd say there plenty of "reasonable doubt" that the dude committed any crime.
Of course, the case could always go to court. Prosecutors have been known to try cases on such thin evidence. But unless the guy actually stood up in court and confessed to doing it, I doubt that any reasonable jury would convict the him. There is just way too much doubt. It's more likely that the case will get kicked over to Missing Persons, where it will stay unless something more concrete as evidence shows up.
that Han's was ever brought to trial. The entire evidence against Hans seems to be that "he's kind of a weird guy."
Really, what other evidence is there? They found a drop of blood *in their home*? What home *doesn't* have genetic evidence *of the people that live their* scattered about. Nina disapeared in her car, away from home. If there was a struggle, it would happen there, not in their house. This entire thing is just stupid, and it sounds like someone, either the police or the DA are just trying to get some publicity and a collar.
The two most suspicious persons that are involved in the case, are of course Sturgeon, an admitted serial killer and generally fucked up guy, and *the wife*, who had every reason to skip town. Sturgeon may be a little weird, but he's not a known criminal, and that's what should count in a case like this...
*Seriously*, though, why isn't that Sturgeon guy in jail? He's *admitted* to commiting murder. What's wrong with the justice system in this country?
What is the fascination with a drop of blood ? If you shone that fancy CSI light in the front passenger seat of my car, you'd find loads of blood, both mine and my wife's. But I haven't killed her.
See, we use the car to go to the hospital sometimes. Like when we're bleeding. So far I've had one trip with my wife for stitches in her hand after she put her hand through a glass pane while helping me fit a door. Then there was the time I rode in that seat while bleeding out of my head after an egress from the loft went a little wrong. So there you have it - both of our blood, mixed, in my car. God help me if I wash it because then I _must_ have killed my wife, right?
The same goes for in the house. You'll find bits of our blood all over the place. The kitchen, from little nicks and cuts while cooking. The lounge from the big DIY project to refit the room. The office, from slicing ourselves on cheap assed computer cases and dripping on the floor before we realised we were bleeding.
So without enough blood to show someone died by exsanguination, what the hell does a drop of blood here or there show? That might be enough for a warrant, but surely not enough for charges.
Microsoft announces a breakthrough in the development of WinFS.....
/You never know; //How far do you want Gates/Balmer to go today?
WinFS is the fastest filesystem.
WinFS is an atomic filesystem, which means that your filesystem operations either entirely occur, or they entirely don't, and they don't corrupt due to half occuring. We do this without significant performance losses, because we invented algorithms to do it without copying the data twice.
WinFS uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases (see farther down). This makes WinFS more space efficient than other filesystems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do. It also means that WinFS scales better than any other filesystem. Do you want a million files in a directory, and want to create them fast? No problem.
WinFS is based on plugins, which means that it will attract many outside contributors, and you'll be able to upgrade to their innovations without reformatting your disk. If you like to code, you'll really like plugins....
WinFS is architected for military grade security. You'll find it is easy to audit the code, and that assertions guard the entrance to every function.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Get a grip dude, all the smarts in the world can't protect you from big dumb guy who means you serious harm and is too stupid to understand the consequences of attacking you.
It reminds me of deterrence theory actually. If you have an opponent who is rational, it is possible to deter them. For example I'd never attack anyone since I don't want to go to prison, lose my job and so on. Probably most of the world is like that - they are like the Soviet Union or America in the Cold War. It's not that they are good it's just that they know if they are too bad then terrible things will happen to them.
But there are a few very stupid people around who'll break a glass over your head whilst drunk and then wonder why the police arrive to arrest them the next morning. These are like a sort of nightmare rogue state because they basically don't understand the consequences of their actions. Like Saddam did't in the first Gulf War for example. They basically end up in prison, just like Saddam eventually did because they can't forsee it.
Now the problem is that if you're smart and in prison you're surrounded by these people - people who are essentially too dumb to be deterrable opponents.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Society will be safer. *Anyone* can kill. If you are in jail, at least there is one less variable.
We already locked everyone up on a planet called Earth.
I ought to bring out the "jump to conclusions" mat. Look, people, you can either not jail anyone, because how can you truly prove guilt beyond any doubt, or you can have a system where it's possible you jail the occasional innocent. How high should your standard be? It should be such that the damage done by the criminals that aren't convicted (and then go on to commit other crimes) is less than the damage done by imprisoning the innocent who are convicted. It should also be high enough to discourage the powerful from gaming the system to control the less powerful.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I made an Inkling prediction market for the probability of Hans being convicted. No real money involved, just the pride from knowing you were right. ;)
~moofbong
If 'con' is the opposite of 'pro', what is the opposite of 'progress'?
Lets look at your simplistic reply shall we?
Your knowledge of the application of the 5th amendment is woefully shortsighted.
I won't bother to answer anything as inflammatory as this.
The Constitution protects you from self-incrimination, but it does not protect you from circumstantial evidence presented against you.
I never said it did. My point was Reiser doesn't have to answer that. The burden of proof is on the state to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Reiser comitted the crime. Had you bothered to read my post, you would have rememberd that I said he sounds guilty, but without any concrete evidence, such as her corpse, it's going to be hard to prove he murdered her. He probably should try to explain why he acted the way he did, but he doesn't have to.
And to put the evidence against him in perspective: One-hundred percent of the evidence presented at Scott Peterson's trial was circumstantial. He's now on death row.
To put that in perspective remember that Scott Peterson was tried, and convicted on the National News long before his court case ever got to trial. He had -0- chance for a fair trial. Not to mention that they found the bodies of his wife and unborn child not far from where he had been "fishing".
All that said, I still believe if Reiser has competent counsel, barring some concrete evidence, he will be set free.
Oderint dum metuant
If you look at Joshua Davis' past articles on Hans (here and here, you'll see that he has been quite sympathetic to Hans' plight. Yet this particular article is much more ambivalent. I suspect the explanation for why this most recent story seems a bit confusing, and the author some what ambivalent, is that his sympathies and opinions about Hans' guilt or innocent have shifted over time.
I was contacted by the author in late March to give background information on the technical facts in the article, and he has never claimed that he was a technical person or in possession of a geek badge. My input into the story was solely on things like "what is a b-tree", and to eliminate the really embarrassing technical errors and misconceptions that the author might have had. At one point I believe the Joshua Davies wanted to put a spin on the "geek tragedy" that Reiser4 was this ground-breaking filesystem with great ideas that was languishing because its author/architect was languishing in fail. So I was given entire paragraphs of technical detail where I had to say, "no that's wrong," and "no, not quite", etc., etc. As far as whether or not Reiser4 was great, ground-breaking filesystem, I tried very hard to give both sides of the story --- that some people would say it was great, and other people would say that Hans had a tendency to fudge benchmarks ---- and I made it very clear that some people might consider that my views were biased, due to my past and continuing work on the ext2/3/4 filesystem, and that the author should definitely contact other people and get their opinions. So I disclosed all, which in my opinion was the only responsible thing to do, and I tried to be very, very careful about labelling what was fact and what was opinion.
(I'm of the opinion that if you want better technical understanding by journalists, if someone approaches you requesting background information and promises that you won't be quoted, you should spend time educating them about technical details, since that's the only way we can improve technical accuracy in reporting. Another interesting thing which I learned is that while Wired rights about subjects at are of interests to geeks, they do not assume that their articles will be written by geeks and they pitch their articles to be understandable by the general public; also, that most of their writers are not geeks themselves. All not surprising if you think about it a little, and especially if you reflect that the intersection of strong technical clue and strong writing skills is pretty rare.)
In the end, the story was about as good as you might expect. The facts of the story are confusing, as there were and there are no clear heroes and several suspicions and deeply flawed human beings that could possibly be villains but for which we can't really say for sure. There are no obvious technical errors in the story, except for one that I noticed, where the word registry is misused and should have been replaced with "data structure" instead: "It contains a single registry -- known as a balanced tree -- to organize every piece of data in the operating system". A lot of the details about reiserfs and reiser4 was ultimately cut out, as being not very relevant to the storyline that Joshua ultimately chose to tell.
I have to say that having spent several hours talking to Joshua Davies, and talking to his editor who spent a lot of time doing fact checking on the technical details and background, that both he and his editor have my respect seekers of truth. He went into this with point of view that I believe was very, very sympathetic to Hans, and it would have been very easy to turn this into a stock storybook story with the police cast as the cardboard, clueless villians, and Hans the hero languishing in jail, the victim of said clueless Keystone Kops. But he didn't do that. He
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
"Innocent until proven guilty" establishes the ultimate burden of proof. It does not mean that the defendant can afford to leave significant questions unanswered.
For example:
[and borrowing a little from the Danielle Van Dam murder case}
The victim was your neighbor.
Thousands of images of child pornography and rape were found on your computer. Blood and hair from the missing girl were found in your R.V. Something about the size and shape of the child's head was smashed against the wall above your bed.
Where is the sleeping bag you bought at WalMart last week? What sudden impulse drove you to take a 200 mile run to nowhere out in the desert?
These are the kind of questions that left unanswered end in a verdict of "guilty as charged." Danielle Van Dam Murder Case
"You're a fucking idiot"
That summed it up. Were you not an idiot, you'd realize I had no intention of reading anything you post ever again.
If you check out his post history, you'll see that he either is a dedicated troll or a really maladjusted teenager with zero ability to have a rational conversation with anyone. Responses to his posts are wasted time.
Yes, she's a stupid human who should never share her opinion because it's moronic, and I'm an abrasive human who is right.
I'm happy with my position in this production.
And isn't it funny that you only address her tone and not the content of her post? We both know why you avoided that, because you know she's wrong.
As I remember it, It's extremely rare for the defendant to take the stand in a murder trial. I believe, it's at the option of the defense, which will almost certainly recommend that Reiser shave, put on a suit, and sit still quietly, looking very solemn.
Spouting what nonsense? Are you talking about his opinions about video games? That was back during a custody battle, not the same case at all.
When you're accused of murder, clamming up about it is not unusual. When you're accused of anything the first thing your lawyer tells you is to shut the hell up about it (it's actually somewhat remarkable that Reiser was talking to this Wired reporter at all). We don't have Hans Reiser's defense yet because he hasn't gone to trial yet. What we do have is the police and the prosecution vigorously trying to make their case to the press, and it might be reasonable to ask why they would do that -- it isn't their job to provide us with a nice sordid media circus.
And apparently you're a complete idiot.
He has not gone to trial yet.
Just a wild guess, but I think Balmer might have something to do with the missing chair...
MMDH? What kind of an addictive substance is that? Multiple minute digitate hyperkeratosis?
Is it phenethylamine, tryptamine, or other? What's the H for? There's nothing about it on Erowid.
How about developing a society where the incentive to commit crimes is lower. If the threshold for obtaining things like food, housing, and health care were lower (as an example), there'd likely be less vioelnt crime and less need to imprison the hungry and whatnot. With a society less worried about protecting everyone from everyone else, it'd be a tad easier to identify the real nutjobs and keep them off the streets. The borderlines who currently get off sometimes probably woulnd't commit crimes to begin with, etc.
:)
Feel free to prove me wrong. Heck, stat with me. I need some dental work, and it'd be nice if I didn't have to pay for it.
On his blog, Nikita Danilov claims that he (NOT REISER) wrote the birth to death story of a znode. See http://nikitadanilov.blogspot.com/2007/06/and-now- to-subject-of-death.html
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
You said
"You are a horrible person"
Then you said
"The fact that ElleyKitten is not making personal attacks"
You mean like your personal attacks? OOOH the hypocrisy runs deep.
Looks like we're both horrible then. But I'm right too.
No. US law is based upon UK law (hint: the US was one of our colonies).
Yeeeeeah, I know. I sort of live here (USA). I was just saying that- ah forget it.
Could there be some statistics of Violence in households of Geeks ? I am sure.. Geeks are an unhappy bunch people, who can never explain there indulgence in Computer screen rather than there wives/gf's arms.
0 0
My Bad, late night posting.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Seconded. In a free country, we don't compromise some people's liberties for the interests of "society as a whole".
The linux sound system used to be so simple. You had a kernel sound driver for your card and some nodes in /dev. And it all worked nicely. End of story. Then someone came along and thought "hold on , thats way too simple , lets make a far more complex and error prone system that no mortal could ever understand let alone set up" and lo , ALSA was born.